Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
The 32- year old Varian Fry left for France soon after the NAZI victory. He was assigned to be the represebntative in France of the Emergency Rescue Committee, a privately organized relief group. Their goal was to recognize people being percecuted by NAZI officials. He arrived with $3,000 and a list of individuals that were thought to be most endangered. He expected that it would take about 1-month to complete his assignment. Fry like most Americans, however, did not comprehend the full dimensions of NAZI barbarity. Fry extended his stay and eventually worked there for 13 months until being driven out by the NAZIs asAmerica and Germany moved closer to war. He left behind hin in France a system of escape routes that would save many lives. Fry engaged in a wide range of illegal asctivities, including converting dollars on the black-market (where much higher exchange rates prevailed), conspired with the criminal underworld, forged documents, and chartered illegal voyages. Fry while in France is believed to have rescued about 1,500 people targeted by the NAZIs.
France even under the absolute rule of the Bourbon monarchs was the center of the European Enlightenment. The French Revolutions introduced liberal ideals throughout Europe and at the same time fired nationalist resentment to French domination. After a series of repunlican, Bourbonm and Nonapartist regimes, the Third Republic emerged in France (1870). France became a haven for people supressed by various imperiasl regimes, primarily Russian and Austrian. The Third Republic with its democratic traditions and liberal values of free speech and open political discourse became a haven for foreign patriots exiled from their native countries for oposing depotic rule. There were many Polish and Rusian exiles in Paris in the years before World War I. With the NAZI seizure of power in Germany (1933), political opponents and Jews sought refuge in France. Hitler after being appointed Chancellor immediately began building a brutally efficent police state enforved by the Gestapo and a nedtwork of horific concentrations. The first was Dachau near Munich which serves as the model for the camps tht followed. Thousands of Germans fled their country during the 1930s. After the Ansschluss (March 1938) and Munich (September 1938), Austrians and Czechs also sought refuge. Many of these refugees were taken in by France. These refugees had every reason to expect arrest and confinment in the brutal NAZI concentration camps if the Gestapo could get hold of them.
The Germans launched the long awaited Western offensive (May 1940). The Germans proceeded to conquer virtually all of Western Europe. After a few months of the "Phony War", France's turn came. The Germans struck on a wide front against the neutral Netherlands, Belgiym, and Luxemburg. The terror bombing of Rotterdam convinced the already hard-pressed Dutch Army to surrender. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) rushed north to aid the Dutch. The Germans then struck in the Belgian Ardenes which allowed them to avoid the formidable Maginot Line. The French and Belgians considered the Ardenes impassable to tanks. The Germans managed to easily penetrate the rough terraine, crossed two substantial rivers, and the XIX Panzer Corps rapidly reached the English Channel--cutting the BEF off from the French and rendering the Maginot Line uselss. The French entrenched behind the Maginot Line simply could not cope with the exposive highly mobil style of Blitzkrieg warfare. The Panzers surrounded the Belgian Army which King Leopold III surrendered. The BEF was within Hitler's grasp. Paris soon fell and the French signed a NAZI imposed armistace. The collapse of France after only a few weeks was a disaster of emense proportions. It was the French Army that had provided the bulk of the allied War Western Front in World War I. The German victory was not accomplished with massivelyu superior numbers or weaponry. In fact they had fewer men and tanks. What they had was a superior tactical doctrine. The Germans were amazed to find, for example, that French tanks were not even equipped with radios, and a more disciplined fighting force. NAZI propaganda began to describe Hitler as " Der grösste Feldherr Allerzeiten " (the greatest field commander of all time). [Davidson, p. 483.] Much of the country was occupied and the French Army was intered in German POW camps.
France under the Armistice (June 22) was divided into two zones. The Germans occupied the larger northern portion and the militarily important Atlantic coast. The French Vichy was allowed to govern the southern portion of the country. The Pétain Government set up a governmnt in Vichy for the sector of southern France that was not occupied by the Germans. The Vichy regime in many ways cooperated with the NAZIs. The most shameful single act was Vichy assistance in rounding up over 80,000 foreign and French Jews as part of the Holocaust so they could be shipped to the death camps in Poland. vichy even ran camps in France with apauling death rates. After the War some Vichy officials were executed and the Gaullists nurtured a myth that the great majority of the French people bravely resisted the Germans. Gaullist claimed that the French people never accepted the Vichy regime as a legitimate French Government. Gradually it has become increasingly clear that the bulk of the French people, shocked by the collapse of the French army and thinking that the War was lost, sought accompdation with the NAZI occcupiers and looked upon Marshal Philippe Pétain with reverence. [Curtis] For years, any questioning of that myth was highly controversial. The film by Marcel Ophuls "Le chagrin et la pitié" (1969) was commissioned by French Government-controlled television, but the documentary on French life during the occupation proved so embarassing that officials were afraid to broadcast it.
The German Western Offensive at first targeted the Lowlands and northern France. After Dunkirk the Germanbs moved south toward Paris. The Government declared Paris and open city. Parisians poured out of the city heading south. The French were terrified of the Germans. Foreign NAZI opponents had even more to fear.
Most refugees and many Jews tried to reach the relative saftey of Vichy or the unoccupied zone. But even here they were not safe. The Franco-German Armistics (June 1940) included the dreaded Article 19.
This article required Vichy authorities to "surrender on demand" any German nationals that the NAZIs wanted. Thus German refugees as well as refugees from NAZI-occupied countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland) which the Germans annexed were not safe even in Vichy. Arrest of NAZI opponents meant confinement in the Third Reich's brutal concentration camps. Article 19 was demanded by the Germans because the Gestapo and SD had developed a standard procedure once a country was occupied of seeking out opponents and arresting them. NAZI officuals and local sympathisers helped to complile the lists of people to be arrested.
Jews were also endanger because Vichy quickly enacted NAZI-style anti-Semetic laws.
France is unique among all the countries which experienced the Holocaust. France was the only defeated Allied country whose government actively assisted the NAZIs. After the French surrender. The Vichy authorities actively assisted the NAZIs track down and deport Jews. [Eizenstat] The first action taken against French Jews after the 1940 invasion was the expulsion from Alsace. To my knowlege, this was one of the very few non-lethal expulsions conducted by the NAZIs. Presumably the master plan for killing the Jews had not yet been fully worked out. Another early action involving German Jews was deporting Jews in Western Landen (Baden, the Saar, and the Palatinate), including some of the oldest German Jewish families, in October 1940 to camps in the French Pyrenees (Gurs, Noé, Récébédou, and Rivesaltes). Gurs was the largest. The death rate was very high because there were not even the most basic facilities. The camps were run by Vichy authorities. The killing of Dutch, Belgian and French Jews began in July 1942 when the death camps in Poland became operational. Vivian Fry, before American entered the War, worked tirelessy in Vichy to build up a rescue network working with the Emergency Resue Committee, a private relief organization. The NAZIs had inserted a "suuender on demand clause" in Article 5 of the Franco German Armistace of 1940. Fry succeeded in resucing more than 1,500 artists, musicians, politicams, scientists, and writers, many but not all Jewish. The Germans make life a nightmare for French Jew, both in Vichy as well as the occupied area. Many French people risked their lives to protect Jews, including French people that were anti-semitic. One French girl recalls a priest who helped save her and her family describe how he disliked Jews, but saving them from the Germans was the "Christian thing" to do. [Cohn] Others assisted the Germans.
Americans were astonished by the fall of France. Mist Americans assumed that the French Army was the strongest in Europe and would again serve as the bulwark against German aggression. The collape if the French Armyvwithin a few weeks shocked Americans. A group of concerned Americans met in New York to organize the American Emergency Rescue Committee to assist refugees. The idea was to rescue noted intelectuals and artists that they believed the NAZIs would target. They initially raised $3,000 to finance the rescue effort. The Committe with the help of knowledgeable Americans and German refugeees who had reached America put together a list of individuals they believed to be in danger. Most were well-known NAZI opponents that the Gestapo would soon begin to hunt down. Without support most would not be able to evade arrest for long.
Refugees were a difficult issue for the Roosevelt Administration. Eleanor in particular pushed her husband to do more. There was, however, considerable opposition in Congress to allowing refugees to enter America. And Congressional approval was needed by the Roosevelt to aid the Allies and re-arm America. Isolationists were vigorously attacking the Roosevelt administration. Some of the most influential were charging that refugees, meaning Jews< were attemoting to drag America into the War.
Administration support for refugeees would seem to add creedence to these charges.
America had strict immigration quitas, but there were exceptions in the law for learned individuals, artists and others. Members of the Committee attempted to obtain viseas from the State Department. Many Ameican diplomats at the time were more concerned with placating Hitler than resucing anti-NAZIs. The fact that many of the refugeees were Jewish worked against them in the eyes of many diplomats. The Committee approached First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who was known to be concerned about the growing refugee problem. The Committee with Elenor's support managed to convince President Roosevelt to authorized a few hundred "emergency visas" for notable artists and intellectuals.
An American visa would not prevent arrest by NAZI and Vichy police, but they were important in helping the refugees escape France before the Gestapo found them.
After collecting the finds and obtaining authority for the emergency visas, the Committee needed someone to go to France anbd contact the individuals that needed assistance. The Committe chose journalist and scholar Vivian Fry to help the refugees. Neither the Committee and Fry had no real idea what would be required to accomplish the mission. In fact whas needed was an accomplished secret agent with the training and expertise to carry out clandestine operations to outwit the Gestapo. But the U.S. Government at the time did not have any trained secret agents, let alone an ad-hoc group like the Emergency Rescue Committee
Varian Fry had no such experience. Fry was a scholarly 32-year old New York editor and writer.
He earned a degree in classics from Harvard University (1931). He was an editor at the Foreign Policy Association where he had closely studied and written about Europe affairs after the NAZI seizure of power. He had no training for relief work, let along training in operations to evade a profesional security force like the Gestapo. Fry was chosen because no one else volunteered to do the job. While Fry had few security qualifications, he did in fact have a hekpful academic background. He was fluent in several languages, knowledgeable about European politics, and for an American an unusual appreciation of European culture. Fry was sympathetic toward oppressed people. As a young teenager, he had withdrawn from a prestigious prep school, objecting to brutal hazing. Taking on the Gestapo, however, was a very different matter. Lookin back, Fry explained why he decided to take on this difficult assignment. "Among the refugees caught in France were many writers and artists whose work I had enjoyed. .... Now that they were in danger, I felt obliged to help them if I could; just as they, without knowing it, had often in the past helped me."
The 32- year old Varian Fry left for France soon after the NAZI victory. His goal was to rescue people being percecuted by NAZI officials. He arrived with $3,000 and a list of individuals that the Committeee thought to be most endangered. He expected that it would take about 1-month to complete his assignment. Fry like most Americans, however, did not comprehend the full dimensions of NAZI barbarity.
Fry did not go to Paris which was olccupied by the Germans. Many refugees had fled into the unoccupied Vichy zone. The Committee chose Marsilles as a base of operations. It was in the Vichy zone and it was an important rail center and port meaning that the vessel traffic provided a way of leaving France. For this reason many refugees had come to Marseilles. The city was located in southern France, relatively close to the Spanish border. While Spain was sympathetic to the NAZIs, General Franco refused to cooperate with the Holocaust. Spanish authorities allowed Jews who reaches the country to pass through. Fry set up in the Hotel Splendide.
To exit France legally, refugees need both a French exit visa and a foreign ebtrance visa. The two most accessible countries were Spain and Portugal. Spanish and Portuguese consulates would issue transit visas. All of these visas normally had short time peiods. Thus refugees often fons that by the time that they managed to get all the needed visas, one had expired And of course the individuals the Germans were looking for were subject to arrest an any time. Fry saw immediately that just helping refugees obtain American visas did not splve the problem.
News of Fry's mission soon spread among the refugee community. Soon there were large number of increasingly desperate refugees coming to Fry's hotle room. Many of the refugees were Jewishm but the Committee was not established just to aid Jewish refugees. The Committee set out to assist the political opponents which often include leading cultural figures, The NAZIs from an early point had removed books of Jewish and other writers from schools and libraries. They had also denied the right of many artists and musicians to practice their craft. Many of these cultural figures had sought refuge in France. Some but not all were Jewish.
Fry extended his stay and eventually worked there for 13 months until being driven out by the NAZIs asAmerica and Germany moved closer to war. Fry before American entered the War worked tirelessy in Vichy to build up a rescue network which would save many lives. Fry engaged in a wide range of illegal activities, including converting dollars on the black-market (where much higher exchange rates prevailed), conspired with the criminal underworld, forged documents, and chartered illegal voyages.
Hiram Bingham proved crucial in Fry efforts because he provided travel documents that could only be issued by Ameican diplomats.
After German and Vichy authorities complained to the State Department, American officials revoked Fry's passport, forceing him to return to America.
Fry while in France succeeded in resucing more than 1,500 artists, musicians, politicams, scientists, and writers, many but not all Jewish.
Curtis, Michael. Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy French Regime (Arcade, 2003), 419p.
Davidson, Eugene. The Unmaking of Adolf Hitler (Univesity of Missouri: Columbia, 1996), 519p.
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